At the beginning of his U.S. tour last week, China’s President Xi met with 650 U.S. business leaders in Seattle. Seattle was a natural place to visit. It is home to the factories of one of America’s largest great export industries – Boeing. It is also a center of America’s tech industry.

Xi came to woo them. He reassured them that China will not discriminate against foreign businesses. He announced a large new aircraft order, one which came with the customary quid pro quo. Just last week Boeing announced that it will build an aircraft plant in China.

We’ve seen this script before many times. Just a few months ago, GM made plans to import cars from China for sale in the United States. This follows many years of GM’s ‘collaboration’ with Chinese companies. Without doubt China has acquired much valuable industrial technology from the American firms that located factories in China.

China is also targeting tech. This week Cisco Systems announced that it would produce computer servers in China, sharing its world-class technology with Chinese server manufacturer Inspur Group.

Officially, the unemployment rate is 5.1 percent of the labor force, defined as those working or, if unemployed, actively seeking employment. Millions of Americans have given up looking for jobs, millions more are on welfare, and millions are working part-time involuntarily. The real unemployment rate is closer to 20% and the country’s malaise shows it. The BLS has just reported that the average wage actually fell in 2014. And the U.S. Bureau of the Census reported Wednesday that for the past three years the median household income stagnated following two years of declines. A dismal picture indeed.

The bankruptcy of both the Democratic and Republican Parties cannot be remedied by a single presidential candidate of either party, although the Trump candidacy for the Republican nomination offers a glimmer of Officially, the unemployment rate is 5.1 percent of the labor force, defined as those working or, if hope. The entrenched oligarchies that control both major parties are incapable of pursuing rational economic programs in the national interest as evidenced by the huge international trade deficits that converted the U.S. since 1970 from the world’s leading creditor nation to the world’s leading debtor nation. The same oligarchies seek the votes of every voting group in the country and thus are incapable of pursuing the national interest. Although the Republicans pretend to be against a big central government, when in power they failed to eliminate a single agency of government (except one—the Export-Import Bank, which they eliminated on ideological grounds. Not only did the Ex-Im Bank not cost the government a red cent but it was the only government agency that created export jobs!), supported every Democratic proposal to send government jobs overseas like the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade, the World Trade Organization, and the TransPacific Trade Agreement, all of which caused or will cause U.S .international trade deficits and will continue to cause the movement of American factories overseas and the loss of millions of good-paying U.S. manufacturing jobs. It has nurtured the anti-global-warming movement which has caused the federal and state governments to waste hundreds of billions of dollars subsidizing crony capitalists with no, literally no, effect on climate change. Following is a program to change all that:

First, we should end our huge chronic trade deficits which have decimated our manufacturing sector and caused the loss of millions of good American manufacturing jobs....

Up until 2007, global trade was expanding. The trade surplus countries were lending money to the trade deficit countries so that the trade deficit countries could buy their products. But imbalanced trade cannot grow forever. Eventually the trade deficit countries become bad credit risks, so the system falls apart. Most economists haven't yet figured this out even though we explained it in our 2008 book and again in our 2014 book. They think that all you need to do in order to enhance worldwide trade is to lower trade barriers. They don't understand the importance of balanced trade.

They are just starting to notice now that world trade has been in decline since 2007, but they can't explain why. In the September 14 Wall Street Journal, William Maudlin began (Worries Rise Over Global Trade Slump):...

This blog post is an exercise in the important art of pointing out the obvious. China's devaluation versus the dollar in August, which shook world markets, was very modest in comparison with the enormous rise of the dollar versus world currencies over the last year. China's devaluation is unlikely a sign of massive weakness. More likely a modest recognition that by staying tied to the dollar China was forcing its currency into an unreasonable stratosphere. As Europe, Japan, and much of the developing world have devalued massively against the dollar, CNY exchange rates were pulled into uncompetitive territory with us. An irony of China's insistence on pegging its currency to the dollar is that this has made China vulnerable to the same hugely out-of-whack exchange rates that continue to undermine U.S. economic competitiveness. Two maps from CNN show this...

Elected Kentucky county clerk Kim Davis refused to grant a marriage license to homosexuals. She did so on religious grounds but it is not the freedom of religion clause of the First Amendment that justified her refusal but the 10th Amendment which recites: “The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively or to the people.” What the US Supreme Court rules is not the “Law of the Land.” The Law of the Land is the Constitution of the United States. Relying on a single clause, the due process clause of the 14th Amendment which was designed to protect the rights of former slaves, the majority of the Court consisting of four political appointees and one “independent” made a decision “at odds not only with the Constitution but with the principles upon which our nation was built”, as Justice Thomas wrote in his dissent.

The majority decision held that all the states must give under the due process clause of the 14th Amendment the law of a single state declaring that homosexuals have the right to marry even when thirty states have laws that state that marriage can only be a union of a man and a woman. Nothing in the Constitution gives the Supreme Court the right to nullify a State’s law that marriage can only take place between a man and a woman. Kim Davis, the county clerk may refuse to marry homosexuals because the Supreme Court unconstitutionally exceeded its constitutional authority....

[An] extensive argument for balanced trade, and a program to achieve balanced trade is presented in Trading Away Our Future, by Raymond Richman, Howard Richman and Jesse Richman. “A minimum standard for ensuring that trade does benefit all is that trade should be relatively in balance.” [Balanced Trade entry]

Journal of Economic Literature:

[Trading Away Our Future] Examines the costs and benefits of U.S. trade and tax policies. Discusses why trade deficits matter; root of the trade deficit; the “ostrich” and “eagles” attitudes; how to balance trade; taxation of capital gains; the real estate tax; the corporate income tax; solving the low savings problem; how to protect one’s assets; and a program for a strong America....

Atlantic Economic Journal:

In Trading Away Our Future Richman ... advocates the immediate adoption of a set of public policy proposal designed to reduce the trade deficit and increase domestic savings.... the set of public policy proposals is a wake-up call... [February 17, 2009 review by T.H. Cate]